Craziest Food Memories

During the break we're reliving some of the weirdest food memories our guests have eaten and drunk (we've heard a lot). 

Herewith, Adam Keith's soup with moving parts, Kirsha Kaechele's Guam fried flying animals, and Dilruk Jayasinha's exam swatting miracle drink...

For the full episodes, just search the guest name, or you can scroll back to the publish dates (as below) 

Adam Keith: 26th August, 2025

Kirsha Kaechele: 24th June, 2025

Dilruk Jayasinha: 9th September, 2025

To find out more about the project and Savva - head to threefoodmemories.com
Insta - @savvasavas @threefoodmemories

Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you! 

TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Your second memory, which is another dinner. A dinner at a restaurant called Linen. First of all, tell us about the restaurant and then let's talk about the dish.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

It was a find this restaurant.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

I can't explain it. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

It it closed up uh soon after we left uh Tucson. So it didn't hang around very long, unfortunately. It was in Tucson, Arizona. We were in Tucson for about 14 months right after 9-11 because we were in New York. That kind of changed things. But so we were at this restaurant. We we, of course, we were dining a lot in New York. We had really beautiful restaurants. And so this new restaurant had pretty much opened up fairly recently, called Linen, and it was a chef from New York. And we decided to go. And it was it was a small restaurant, it wasn't really big, you know, like tablecloths, the whole thing. And uh we I think we mentioned to the um waiter that we were coming from New York, and we knew the chef was from New York, and you know, started a little conversation that way. The waiter brings out this gazpacho soup, heirloom tomato soup, big ass bowl, like huge bowl, and thank God it was. And in the bowl were these tiny little eels trying to swim up the bowl. And so they were live. They were live, honey. They were alive. They were alive. Thank you, it was gazpacho soup, so it served cold. They were live, and my partner and I just looked at each other and just shrugged and just ate it. And they were just sort of like um El Dente pasta.

SPEAKER_03 1:30

Can you chill nana? Um just just just do the the thing going down your throat, the eel. You going down your throat, the sense that do you chew it? Like what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Well, I did I did bite some of them because again, that's how I knew it was like this al dente kind of feel to it. Um it's Did you hear it cry or something? No, no, they're really small, they're about maybe two inches long. Send it back. But they're really thin. Like they're real they're almost like a little spaghetti. Yeah, but they're alive. Al dente. And it um we just did it. I was just like, okay. You know, we're adventurous that way. I'm like, okay. And if the funny thing is, if you would have put like bugs in front of me, I would be like, no, no, I can't I can't do this. I can't do it. Like, no, no. But the funny thing is, if it's anything from the sea or whatnot, I'm fine. Like, you know, we I've tried sea slugs, I've tried like I I will be very adventurous, but when you show me insects, I'm like, uh no.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Yeah, no. So there were a number of other delicacies at the time, weren't there, in Guam?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Well, can tell us some of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Well, I think the really sensational one is fruit bat. So when I arrived in Guam, when a beautiful thing about Guam is the fiestas. So everyone, it's all about the fiestas every weekend. People don't go to restaurants or clubs, they go to a fiesta, and there's always several on every weekend night, and even during the week. So you and your friends or your friends and their family go to the fiestas, and a lot it was always a long table, and I think that's had a huge influence on my life and work. Always this long table. And inevitably, towards the end of the table for some reason, because there seemed to be an order about it, red rice was first. Fadang, this beautiful bread made out of the psyched plant, um, which is known to be kind of toxic, but if you process it the right way, you can make this fluffy bread. That was second. And you go through all the dishes, you go through you'd get to Kelegwin, which is like a cured fish with hot peppers and coca fresh coconut.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

Like a ceviche of sorts.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Like a ceviche, but with lots of coconut in it. Yeah. And you would oh, the amount of coconut grating that everyone had to do before the fies, tremendous. Like, and you sit on these special little benches and you would just shave coconut by hand. It was a lot of work. Anyway, you passed the Kelaguin, there would be chicken keleguin and fish keleguin. You go through all of the various uh dishes, and in the end was a big basket next to the whole pig on a spit was a big basket of fruit bat. Whole fruit bat, whole roasted fruit bats.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

How was it described to you? I mean, you were you would have been a young girl, so it wouldn't have been anything.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

It didn't have to be described because you walk up and you could see them with their teeth and their eyes and their ears and their wings and their feet with their claws. It was just the whole entire fruit bat. And so how would you wait? Would you just pick it up and shocked and horrified, you know? I was really horrified. Um But I don't know. I think I managed to give it a taste a few times. What does it what does it taste like? I don't remember it being offensive. It was probably really good. I I don't think I managed to get past the adorable a frozen face of horror animalness. It it's like a petrification of Yeah, they looked really sad. I didn't like it. I'm kind of a natural vegetarian. I just never really liked dead animals.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Now, this second food memory is called Berofi. It's a horrible drink that you invented out of desperation while you were cramming it. Anyone who has done cram study will have a version of this. What is birofi?

SPEAKER_02 5:19

I think it's the it's the clue is in the title itself, I think. Basically, I had I would leave all the studying for the vacation work uh what we called um SWATVAC, I think is what we called the the it was about a week of uh no uni just to study, study break, right? And I would just like zero in during that time, and the rest of the time I'd muck around. And there was this one um exam, corporate law, that I remember going into a lecture and feeling like, oh my god, that's so boring. And uh 12 weeks later I went to the last lecture just to take down notes of what um what she was suggesting might be on the books, uh beyond the exam, sorry. And so I then the night before that exam, I just downloaded all 12 lectures, so 24 hours worth of lectures, and listened to it on double speed, and around 3 a.m. started to fade because it's corporate law and not, you know, not the the the not not a Christopher Nolan Batman series. I was just trying to like, I was desperately trying to stay awake, so I then decided to have a black coffee, but I thought, well, there's also barocca that apparently gives you energy. Why don't I put a barocca into the black coffee? And I'll tell you what, Sava. I have never I've been to the I'm a celebrity jungle and eaten some horrible shit. But uh but the barrafi is one of the worst concoctions because it's it's it's it frotts like I would um I tried it with milk coffee at first, and then obviously the milk sorry, just called curdle and it was gross, but then uh I did it with just black coffee and it created a little this form-y orange-y kind of brown form at the top. And then I just using my pint sculling skills, I just scull the whole thing at once. And the first 30 seconds did it come out of your nose? No, no, did it the froth, the perfume, the frizziness? No, no, the hardest part was the warm, the the fact that it was uh the hot coffee, you know what I mean? And and that baroffy fl barocca flavor. So the first 30 seconds you spend it on the floor convulsing because you're just so ashamed of what your life has been.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

Have you got the lecture on uh on the background? Well what's that nickel?

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah, I think I would have because I didn't have enough time. It was like, you know, I'd only had 12 hours to try and get all this done. And so I yeah, just disgusting, horrible flavor. But then afterwards, once it kicks in, yeah, you're up again for quite a while. And um, and I managed to not sleep and keep going and and I and passed that exam as well.